Return to Haifa Haifa

On my last day of break I had the chance to head back up to Haifa. I love that city. Yes you need a car to get around, which is a little bit annoying, but the city is just beautiful. The weather was a little humid when I got off the bus, but really not that bad, and it was a nice change from Jerusalem's chilly air.

I tried to get ahold of my friend Ayelet, who was coming to pick me up at the bus station and surprise! I found my friend Zohar who was also meeting to hand out for the day. We talked for a little bit until we met Ayelet to go around the city.

We checked out the Behai Gardens, which are done with their renovations on their shrine, and it was really cool to see that again. We didn't take the entire tour, but hung out on the steps at the first level. After a short coffee break in the German Colony we went towards the Druze Village nearby for lunch.

I'm really starting to like this hummus with Ful, but I don't really know what ful is. It's a little spicy and look like beans. But I don't really know what they are aside from good!

We went to the Carmelite Monastery to look at the amazing view from this height. The pictures don't do it full justice, but I can't really describe the valleys, mountains and cities that we looked at. As it turns out, this monastery is the location where the Prophet Elijah battled against the Priests of Ba'al. More random history I didn't expect to find.





After the monastery we walked along the beach. The boardwalk was very cool to walk up and down. None of us were prepared to go in the water so we just hung out for a while talking on the edge of the water. It was a great way to end break. I had a lot of fun seeing friends from camp and seeing other parts of the country I hadn't been to in a while.

Since I've already had a few days back to school and we have lectures again tomorrow, I should probably get to a little homework and reading for classes. Finals are on the way soon, so perhaps I should get a little ahead of the game this time.

Shabbat Shalom,

Kiryat Shmoneh, Day 2

Not only did I get to sleep in incredibly late, 10AM, but once I work up Ariel made an awesome breakfast. As soon as breakfast was finished we needed to start thinking about lunch. We made a salad and some hotdogs to bring with us. We tried to find these hot springs, but after an hour or so of searching, we gave up and headed into the Banyas.

As a school, we had the option to go there while we were in the north. I had gone with the group up the mountains to see the Syrian border from a mountain lookout. Being back in the north I wanted to see the Banyas Park. It was a beautiful forested area and a nice river flowing through it. Not one of the little trickles one usually sees, but a river with a quick enough flow it feels like it could sweep you off your feet.

It was pretty amazing. We spent a very long time just hanging out in a nice area next to the river, lunch was great.



We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening just hanging out at their apartment, playing games on the Wii, talking, and working on Labaneh (a cheese made from yogurt, stirred and left to sit and drain until it becomes a cheese).

The next morning the Labaneh was our breakfast with some olive oil, zatar and menta on Matzah. I got to hang around with them for a few more hours before I had to get on the bus back towards Jerusalem.

I learned my lesson about which bus to take. A little note to myself, make sure you don't take the one that stops at every single stop on the side of the road. It only took four and a half hours to get back to Jerusalem. Instead of taking a cab back from the bus station, I decided to walk since it was so nice.

It turns out that the walk is about 40 minutes, and if I didn't need to go to the station early in the morning I'd take the walk instead of dealing with a cab. I really had a good weekend in Kiryat Shmoneh and I'm glad that I was able to spend so much time with Michal and Ariel.

A Nice Break

It's been great having a lot of time off of school that last week. I really have a good chance to appreciate parts of Israel and even parts of Jerusalem when I don't have the weight of classwork in the back of my mind.

I hadn't seen any of my Israeli friends for a while, so for the weekend I went up north to Kiryat Shmoneh to hang out with Michal, one of the shlichim (Israelis that come to work at summer camps) that I became really good friends with. Even though I hopped off the bus in the rain, the backdrop of the city is beautiful!

You have the mountains in the background and if you look off into the distance you can even see Mount Chermon, the highest peak in Israel, if the sky is clear enough. The city itself is a sleepy little town in the periphery of Israel (this has been one of the themes of Israel Seminar this year) and there isn't an overwhelming number of things to do.

PERFECT!

We went for a drive on Friday afternoon to try to find something called Knafe. I will write about that at another time. On the way to Masadeh (a town up in the hills) we picked up some hitch hikers, and this is something completely normal. When you live out on the periphery, often times you have no way to get around when you don't have a car. The answer is to walk and hope a car passes that is willing to give you a ride somewhere. It was really interesting talking to these two guys who were out on the week of leave from the army to hike trails in the Golan.

After trying Knafe at a two different restaurants in the Druze Village we went for hike to see the ruins of a Syrian town, I don't remember the name of it, that appeared to be have been abandoned after the borders moved in 1967. Nature really conqures everything in the end. The houses that had been damaged, apparently due to fighting during the war, were filled in with grasses and the woods creeping back in to retake their land.

Standing inside one of these ruined houses we could see some stunning views of heights. It was absolutely breathtaking.

For dinner, Ariel, Michal's boyfriend, cooked an amazing vegetarian, Indonesian flavored, dish. It was a little like a stir-fried, Asian Chipotle. But instead of a burrito, it is wrapped in rice paper.
(For those of you wondering why I'm eating ride, it's passover. I do not exclude Kitniyot from my diet during the holiday)
I have to say that Ariel is an amazing cook, dinner and the trekking that day was amazing.

That was just day 1.

I'm writing this from the bus ride home (yea for having internet on the busses), so there will be another post later with more of my break and a few pictures as well.

There's Something in the Water

I've been having pretty bad heartburn all year this year. I've tried cutting out some of the spicy foods. I've tried waiting until I've had something to eat in the morning before having coffee, reduced my coffee and soda consumption. I've had more dairy products after meals (the base is supposed to cut the acid). I've even blown through a few bottles of tums and nothing has been working.

I noticed it was a bigger problem the more water I drank. It was really bad during the Ride4Reform when I was drinking 4 or 5 litres of water every day. Then I finally made the connection.

Our Israel seminar class invited a speaker to talk about environmentalism in Israel. One of my classmates asked about the drinking water in Israel. She had heard from someone that there are issues with the drinking water here and that was why she only drank from bottles. While Dr. Alon Tal assured us that the water here is more than good to drink, there are increased amounts of sediment or other things that build up because it is harder water than in the states. They also use different additives than we're used to.

I started thinking, maybe it's the drinking water that's getting my heartburn going. So I bought some big bottles of water. In fact, I bought 6 2-litre bottles for about $5. I'm surprised to find that I've had much fewer issues with heartburn now that I'm drinking most of my water from a bottle instead of from the tap. I know this is only empirical evidence, and don't take this to mean I don't trust the water in Israel, but it's one of those things I just haven't been able to adjust to in the last 10 months of living here.

Settlers of Catan

So there are times when I'm looking for something to do. I like to play games and there are some people here that like to play too. Usually I've been playing a lot Sheish Beish (Backgammon) and earlier this year it was a lot more Banana-grams or Scrabble.

A few months ago, I finally learned to play this complicated board game. One of the best parts about this game is that on the basic level there is a wide variety of strategies that you can employ to try to win. To make the game even more interesting, the board changes every time AND the value of each item changes each time you play the game.

Daniel doesn't like when it is described this way, but it feels like a combination of Risk and Monopoly. It's really been a lot of fun.

I'm really nerding out a little bit, but I really love playing this game and I can't wait to pick it up when I get back to the states.

Even better, though, is that there are expansions that you can add to the game. Even though it makes the game much more complicated and adds more strategic thinking about how you can win, it actually makes it a lot easier to learn. It's really a lot of fun and if you like to play games, I would highly recommend picking it up.

Back in Action

I realize it's been quite a while since I put much of anything up here. As you may know, I spent all week last week on the seat of a bike riding all over the center of Israel. That also meant that I missed an entire week of school. Between mid-terms and making up all of the work I missed I've been a bit overloaded, not that I'm complaining.

Compounding that problem, the cord to charge my laptop broke. I think it had something to do with the fact that I take the cord everywhere so I can keep my computer running. Although I was able to borrow cords at school to give myself some more juice, I had to be judicious about how much time I spent on my computer aside from using it for class.

A special thanks to one of my classmates that was back in the USA, I have a new cable and everything is good again. I have a few days off for Purim and I'm almost completely caught up on my course work. Look for a few posts in the coming days to update on what's been going on for the last few weeks.

Also look for a new post about the Ride4Reform on TCJewfolk.com in the next few days.

Shabbat Shalom,

Hand-Washing Laundry

My clothes were really muddy. There were a couple of days on the bike ride that we hit some strong rain, and a nice mud puddle. It was disgusting. Just muddy, sweaty and gross. So I threw them into the laundry and hoped for the best.

Wrong.

After running through one laundry cycle, my stuff was still muddy. What was I to do? I spent an hour or so washing by hand all the the shirts and jerseys that I wore. They're pretty clean now, I couldn't get everything out. I even used some spot cleaner and I didn't get it completely clean...

Unintentional Naps

I'm writing now because I have no motivation to do any homework. I was having a snack this afternoon with my heater blasting in my room watching a little TV on my computer and the next thing I know my phone is going off. It's two hours later and I need to get my shoes on to go to dinner. What happened?!?!

No, seriously. I don't know what happened. I'm not big on the napping. I sleep at night and I have stuff to do during the day. The only exception being when I'm sick. I'm not going to complain because it felt great. I woke up with a lot of energy. But there goes my afternoon plans to get some homework done.

Now I'm back from a great dinner with great people and I have a lot of homework to do. It's 10pm and I have absolutely no motivation. I just don't want to do anything. Arrgh! What happened to my motivation? This is why I don't take naps usually.

Hopefully I get some sleep tonight and don't start off a bad cycle the week before I have to bike 300km from Modi'in to Masada on the Ride for Reform.

By the way, I'm still working on raising money for the ride. Any support you can donate is greatly appreciated. Visit their site to donate online.

Ain't No Fun

Somethings I just don't understand and are just not fun at all. I'm sick again and I don't get it.

I've never been someone that gets sick that often and my body heals itself pretty well. But this is the third or fourth time this year that I'm sick. My throat is sore, and my nose is stuffy. It seems like every time I start to get better and go back to class, bam! I'm sick again.

I'm not sure if it's that I'm not sleeping enough, or that I've never warm here. But something is off and I just can't get healthy. I cannot wait until the temperature around here heats up and I feel warm in the mornings. I miss having a heating system that works well so I don't get cold overnight, waking up like I was hit in the face with a 2x4. Ugh.

I promise that soon I will have some good stories and pictures about our trip to the south. Aside from getting sick again, it was a great trip. I know they won't read it, but thanks to the faculty for putting together such a good trip. It was a lot of fun.

Valentine's Day

I've never been big on Valentine's Day. It's not that I didn't have someone to spend it with, or that I didn't get enough Valentine's as a kid. I've just never been a big fan of Hallmark Holidays. This one always seemed phony to me and I never liked it. Then I did something stupid, I started dating someone on August 14th, which meant that it had been 6 months on Valentine's Day a few years ago. It became a bit of a big deal for her.

I still wasn't convinced about Valentine's Day being a big deal. But something was different this year.

It's only been a month since the last time I saw her, but I really missed Kaitlin today. She loves Valentine's Day and I really wanted nothing more than to spend some time with her today. On top of that, I remembered something interesting I heard from one of my friends Yael, spoke during services this morning.

She said something that I thought about a lot today after services. It's not about the day itself. It's not about spending money on someone because Hallmark says that you need to. In the US, it has become a day that can remind you to say something you should say every day.

She's dead on.

It's not that I forget, or that I don't care on every other day. Valentine's Day can be a reminder to tell people that you care about them. So from someone that has finally found a way to care about Valentine's Day, I hope you had a good one, and are able to spend it with someone that you care about.

My Back is Killing Me

The following is a complaint session. If you don't want to read my complaints about back pain at 25, I understand.

I don't know what the problem is now. I've just got this unbearable backache at all times. I crack my back in class probably 10 times in each 90 minute class and it cannot be good for me. I can't stand to sit up straight and I think I'm starting to develop a hunch. Okay, maybe it's not that bad, but it feels like it.

The amount of time I need to spend reading for class is nothing new, and I've never had this as an issue before in my life. It seriously hasn't bee this bad since a few summers ago when before I finally bought a new bed. I'm sure the one I'm sleeping on now is not very helpful but I just don't know what to do.

I don't want to develop something that will be a life long issue. I'm trying to get in some yoga and stretching in whenever possible. But there just isn't enough time to do that every day. I feel better when I have the chance to do a little work in the gym. Here's the time problem again.

Anyone have any suggestions?

One Week From NOW

From the moment this post goes up, it will be exactly one week until Kaitlin gets to Israel. Most of our relationship has been over a long distance. By that I mean two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half hours away, and I never went more than six weeks without seeing her. Now it has been almost six months.

Six months is a long, long time and I can't wait to see her.

We have some tentative plans in place. Since she has never been to Israel, we're going to get a car and go to the Dead Sea and climb Masada in the morning to watch the sunrise from the top of the mountain (I really wanted to do that when I was here on Taglit, but y group decided they didn't want to do that). Kaitlin also wants to check out Eilat, but instead, I think we're going to keep going south into the Sinai. This way we can get into Egypt, something we both want to do, and check out some really cool places some of my friends told me about when they took trips down there.

There are a bunch of things we want to do around Jerusalem. Check out the Dome of the Rock/Temple Mount, museum hopping, you know I'm going to take her to the shuk, restaurants, campus and many other things. She really wants to head to Tel Aviv for a day or two to check out that city and we might find a way to take a day trip or two.

I'm really excited to show her the city I've been living in for the last six months and to introduce her to my friends. I think it will be good for her to meet some of the people that I will be studying with for the next four years.

Anyway,
It's Christmas Eve. It's strange to not be in the cities. It's strange to not have snow all over the ground. It's strange to not hear a ton of Christmas Music and Christmas commercials on the radio. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I like that I don't feel overloaded, but I strangely miss some of the normal signs of the season.

For anyone who is celebrating Christmas tonight and tomorrow, "Merry Christmas!" I hope you have a meaningful holiday and spend some good time with family.

For everyone else, I'm probably going to search out some Chinese Food here. I'm not sure if any of it is any good, but it may be worth a shot.

Flag Football: Game 3

While the game was over a week ago, I have no idea what the score was. I know we got stomped pretty badly, but we managed to get three touchdowns and I caught one of them!

Thanks to a great turnover caused by one of my teammates Dana, we had the ball in great field position. I was getting tired of running the end around and I told Brian, the Quarterback at the time, that I wanted to go out for a pass. Starting from the left side of the field, I ran in underneath after Steven cleared a nice space for me to move through. Wide open, Brian hit me with a perfect pass where it needed to be and I hopped over the line into the end zone! Touchdown!

Yep, I threw another interception. As I stepped back to launch a deep pass, I felt the ball come out of my had poorly. The wounded duck flopped all over the place and Brian had no chance to get back under the ball. My bad.

But this was quite possibly the most fun I'd had since we started playing. When the game started I was really frustrated with the attitude of the other team. They had this guy who played ball for the Texas Longhorns, and in a fun, Tuesday Night Flag Football League, he was taking it way to seriously. There were a bunch of guys on their team that took themselves too seriously. In every game we have played so far, we usually just keep one ball on the field and play with it the whole game. Apparently they refused to use our ball and refused to let us use theirs.

The redeeming factor was that a few guys on their team knew that this was just for fun and didn't act like this was a professional game. One guy especially looked like he was having a good time. But the bad attitude of the rest of the team made the fact that we were having so much fun even better!

I especially liked the fact that at the end of the game, I was walking to put the flags away and I heard their "coach" reaming out a few of his guys. I even caught one of them asking if the game was at the same time next week. The classic response was, "I don't know, I'll call you and let you know." Which I interpreted to mean, "I'm not sure if I want to use you again." On the way out of Kraft Stadium I heard the two guys complaining about how they let us score and how they let us have too much time to let plays develop.

We're having fun, and that's the point. It's not about winning or losing, we come to run, to have fun and to play a game. Whether it's the pre-game speech, (this week's was "There's no crying in baseball", a-la A League of Their Own) or our cheering section that was as packed as usual, it was fantastic!

I'm still sending a massive shout-out to Marina, who every time I make a play screams, "That's my roommate!"

My injury status this week is listed as questionable, we'll see how I feel recovering from this cold. If I feel good, you know I'll be out there running around and enjoying every second of it!

Finally Better

It's actually amazing what 10 to 13 hours of sleep per night can do for you.

My normal daily routine here gets me up around 6:30 in the morning so I can get a little stretching and if I'm lucky some Yoga in before I cook breakfast and shower. As the year has gone on, it's been easy to not get up for all of that, and instead pop up around 6:30 so I can go over some notes, a reading or polish a homework assignment before running to school. Trying to get there early so I can have some coffee, organize my stuff or what have you before class starts.

That's the plan every day. What complicates this is the fact that I'm usually up until at least midnight working on homework or talking to people back in the states. Thus, waking up at 6:30 is difficult and my great morning plans don't usually work out the way I want them to and I end up wandering into class about two minutes early since I "speed-walked" my way to school to get there on time.

However, I started to get a cold last week and I found myself missing the services and my first class on Thursday, sleeping in through the bus to go to Qumran on Friday, sleeping late on Saturday and again not getting up until after 11:00 this morning. Not a good way to start the week before exams, right?

I guess I needed it.

I'm not a person who likes to takes medication unless I need to in order to make life happen. I'm glad i've been medicating myself with rest and about a gallon of herbal tea. I finally feel good for the first time since Tuesday last week. Maybe I've been running myself too hard, maybe I need a little more sleep on a regular basis. Maybe I just finally caught the cold/sickness/mono/crud/exhaustion that's been going around our program.

I've honestly spent a total of an hour outside my apartment since Thursday night. That includes a trip to the grocery store so I could make myself soup for dinner, lunch and dinner. I'm going to keep resting today, working on assignments for classes this week and towards finals.

Who knows, maybe next semester I can keep my normal schedule better.

That Time of the Year

Every year in college, right around finals, I would start to get a bit of a cold. I would chalk it up to the fact that I tend to run myself ragged. The weather changes for the colder and I usually catch a nice little cold. Once finals are finished I usually crash into a bed with a nice little cold and take a few days away from the world.

Nothing is different this year, except one thing. I'm not to the end of finals week yet. I'm still two weeks away from starting them. And being that this whole grad-school thing is a little tougher than working on my undergraduate degree, I have been trying to get a jump start of studying for exams. Here is where everything get's a little bit more complicated.

I've got a cold now. Yeah, yeah. A common cold is nothing that should knock me down, and I'm not looking for pity from anyone. But I've had an excruciating headache and have been incredibly sensitive to light. The last few days, I've been unable to get out of bed before 10:00 AM. It's been nice getting a fuller night's sleep each night, but I'm not a fan of being sick like this.

I'm hoping the soup I had for dinner, mixed with glasses upon glasses of tea will help get this crud out of my system and I can take on finals at full force as soon as possible. Ugh.

I wish there was better stuff going on right now to write about. But it is what it is.

Kid A & Winter

I don't understand why I have this association, but Kid A, by Radiohead will always have an association with winter for me. It could be that the first time I heard the album was in the winter. Maybe it was the number of times I played it while driving to and from Fargo, thanks to Kaitlin for that high number of drives, many of which were in the winter. It might have something to do with the album cover, or just the quiet, calm sounds of the first tracks. I really have no idea the real reason, and maybe it is a combination of all of them.

I'm sitting here in Jerusalem with a nice warm cup of coffee reading an assignment or two for class tomorrow and one of those songs popped up on my iTunes. It felt very out of place to me. I looked out the window to a bright sunny day, and realized that I still have all the windows open wearing shorts and a t-shirt. The current temperature is 68 and it's supposed to get a lot warmer today. I'm left wondering, where is winter? What happened to Jerusalem being freezing? All I heard about the winters here, before I came, was that it gets much colder than you will anticipate. Be prepared. The houses don't keep heat during the winter because they are designed to stay cooler in the summer. What is going on?

From what I've heard floating around, this winter is abnormal. It's actually getting dangerous for the agriculture of Israel because there hasn't been any rain yet. I was really excited the first time I was poured on, because it hasn't really since I arrived. I'm sad to say that it hasn't really rained here since then either. The drought is so bad that for last Thursday, the Chief Rabbi of Israel made it a fast day, for those who listen to him, and told people to say additional prayers for rain. I take that with a grain of salt, or two, since I don't really follow much of what he says, but it demonstrates the nature of this problem.

There was a story in the Jerusalem post this week that blamed the recent butter shortage (yeah, there is a butter shortage right now) on the heat. Apparently, according to the story, in heat like this the dairy cows do not produce as much milk, or the right byproducts to create butter. I guess that explains why the butter was so expensive for me to buy to bake blondies last week.

Now before my friends and family back in Minnesota start complaining about the fact that I'm sitting here in a comfortable climate and they're stuck in a freezer with a potential snowstorm for Thanksgiving, (although I'm not sure how the weathermen could predict that over a week away) I miss the snow. I miss the cold. I miss the seasons changing. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that I'm still wearing sandals and I'm going to go play football outside this afternoon. I just feel strange not bundling up to leave the house.

Until the "bone-chilling" rains set in, I guess I will just have to listen to a different album while I do my homework.

Where Did My Freetime Go?

I used to be really good about putting up a blog almost daily. But then reality has set in. I’m just not going to have that much time this year. The amount of reading and studying this year is going to require, it is unrealistic that I will be able to spend the requisite amount of time to put up little journals. So what have I been up to the last week or so?

A lot of school. I’m not kidding, it’s been a lot of school work and studying. Yeah, I’ve been getting out a little bit, but not that much. I don’t have many interesting stories to share right now. The biggest news is that I decided to join the YMCA.

In Hebrew, you don’t say each letter in the abbreviation, so I didn’t join a Y.M.C.A., I actually joined the Yimkah. It reminds me a lot of the JCC in Saint Louis Park. Small, some good machines, but not a lot of them. There is a 25-meter pool and a basketball court as well. The best part is that it is on my way home from school. Instead of not exercising at all, I am going to make a concerted effort to get in there and move some weights around. I think it will help blow off some of the stress I’m feeling with all of the coursework.

I’ve also started buying a Newsweek every Friday. I’ve been going to a grocery store near my house every Friday morning. On the way home I pass a newsstand that has a bunch of English papers and magazines. I’ve been feeling really disconnected from world news, so I think this will help me keep tabs on what is going on in the world.

Unfortunately I think some of my favorite podcasts are going to be going on the back burner, maybe permanently. I just don’t have the time to listen to them and there are many more important things I can listen to so I can stay up on the world news. Sorry KFAN. Anybody form Minneapolis know of some good news sources (not the Strib online) that I can read so I can still follow the sports that I love?

It’s still friggin hot!

I was talking to the security guard at school and he said that this weather is abnormal. This week the weather has been back in the low to middle 30’s. My conversion numbers are off, but I think 38 is equivalent to 100? Someone better at math and science care to help me out with this?

I guess normally the weather has started to cool off at this point in the fall, and we have had a few days with some rain. But I didn’t expect to still be sweating through my Under Armor t-shirts in the middle of October.

Sorry about the length of this post, there will also be a few more coming quickly in the next few days. We’ve had a long ride up to the Keneret (Sea of Galilee), so I’ve had the chance to put a lot of words onto “paper”.

Kids and Israelis

The HUC-JIR Year In Israel Program is not the only group of people that use the space here in Jerusalem. There is an Israeli Rabbinic Program and a Gan (Preschool/Kindergarden) that are on campus too.

The Israeli school year started back at the beginning of September and we've had tons of little kids on campus since then. They're really cute. It always makes me smile to see how excited they are to be going to school. It was kinda funny last week though. I had arrived to school early and was getting a cup of coffee in the Moadon and there was this very little boy who clearly wanted to get something from the shop, but they clerks couldn't see him.

I asked him, in Hebrew, what he wanted to order. There was a minor problem though. In his very shy, high pitched voice, I had no idea what he was asking for. When it was apparent that I didn't understand him, he looked at me like I was crazy. I finally asked a passing classmate to help. It turns out the words I couldn't understand were, Mayim Ta'im (Flavored Water). But then he didn't have enough money, so of course I helped him out.

Although I have a hard time understanding the kids, it always puts a smile on my face to see them with their parents in the mornings.

Then, Yesterday was the first day of the IRP (Israeli Rabbinic Program). Another 20 something students showed up on campus to start their studies this year. It was really cool to see them all coming back from a summer off. A first observation, the IRP students are in a much different stage in life. I haven't talked to many of them (but I hope to soon), but they seem to be older. Not old, but older, as in, not just a few months to a few years out of college.

I'm guessing that they have a very different life experience and I can't wait to learn from them.

With all of the schools back in session, it's great to see all the different people on campus right now.

You Can't Please Everybody

I'm not trying to be super negative here, but I'm starting to learn, even more so, an important lesson about being in leadership positions. You sometimes need to make a decision and often you will upset somebody. No matter how much you think about the consequences, there will be people who think you made the wrong choice.

It is easy to let these things get to you, it is very easy to feel like you're making bad decisions. I keep coming back to the idea that I should focus on those that appreciate the effort you have put forth. Sometimes this is just hard to do though, it's not easy to put aside criticism. This is especially true when the other person has a valid point. I just need to stand by how I felt and the logic behind my choices and trust that I made the right decisions.

Place In Judaism

We have these smaller reflection groups that meet once a month on Mondays. My group met for the first time this past Monday and our first topic of conversation was about the role that place should play in Judaism. What changes for a lot of us is exactly this role.

This year, being in Israel, we are in a new place. This is something completely new to me. I have never been outside my communities in Minneapolis, especially for some of the important Holy Days. I think a large part of this has to do with the unfamiliarity here. What we talked about in our group was that sometimes community can create a place for you. One of my colleagues brought up the example of the Israelites building a the place for God to reside in the community while they were wandering in the wilderness.

I started to think about this a little more. Without looking back at the text, I remember that the people needed to make a holy home for God to reside among the people. Another part of this command was that the people needed to make themselves a holy community as well. In this case, then you don't need a specific location to be special for you, but you need the community to also create this holiness.

Arguing the other side of the argument, there are specific locations that I feel like I can connect to God. Although I am very frustrated with some of the things that have been happening at the Kotel lately, it is still a special place to me. The Kotel represents the closest place that we are allowed to pray to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Although the worship offered historically at the Temple was animal sacrifice, something I do not agree with in today's culture, there is something special about this place. When we wandered over there during Yom Kippur, I couldn't help but offer more prayers and another recitation of Vidui (Confession) at the one of the most important sites to Judaism.

There are other places that are special to me too. Thinking about them helps me focus my thoughts. I remember sitting at Camp TEKO in the little chapel that overlooks Lake Minnetonka. Listening to the wind blow through the trees and hearing the boats motoring around the lake is a place that I have found a connection.

At times, I have thought about what Judaism would look like without Israel - the country. Yet I keep coming back to the fact that Israel is incredibly important. Not only are there holy sites, but this is the only place in the world that Jewish traditions affect the entire country.

For example, during Yom Kippur, the country shuts down. I was able to walk down the middle of the wrong side of the road because there were almost now cars. The streets were so quiet! Kids were riding on their bikes and people were out in force. I didn't even wear a watch because time didn't really matter.

It isn't even near Pesach yet, but I have been told that you can go get food at almost any restaurant because they are almost all Kosher for Pesach. Israeli summer is effected by the Holy Day cycle and even the time change is effected -we moved our clocks back the Sunday after Rosh HaShanah to make Yom Kippur easier.

What role does place play in Judaism? I still don't know actually know a full answer. Part of it is memory, part of it creates community. A place can inspire thoughts and prayers, and a place can make you so incredibly frustrated that you just want to shout. Places can connect us to our history. Yet it is that history that also causes problems. I think this is going to be a lifelong process of figuring out how Israel, the country, should play into my life as a Jew. But I'm glad this course is making me start to think about it.

L'Shalom